“Home is where my parents live.” “Home is a place you go back to.” “Home is where I sleep at night.” These definitions were part of Alaine Handa’s creation Chameleon. Like the creature that changes color, we acclimate to our environs. What makes Handa’s production intriguing is that she has researched and interviewed Third Culture Kids (TCK), people who, like Handa, have lived in diverse cultures and integrate elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture.

During the mixed-media performance, excerpts of TCK interviews were projected on the back wall of the stage, providing stories of continuous transplantation: childhoods that were spent in four, five, eight different places. The question “What is home?” was part of one interview. Another question “What is your favorite food?… [long pause] What would you select as your last meal?” stumped a TCK. She ended up with a combination of sushi, dim sum, Mexican food, an Italian dish and a French dessert.

Interspersed between videos were choreographed sections performed by Handa, Jun Lee and Ivilisse Esguerra. Each dancer had a concentrated and graceful demeanor, but their movement phases seemed more cluttered than coherent. It takes a discerning choreographer to distinguish between fusion and confusion. Unlike the specificity presented in the interviews – where respondents recalled particular anecdotes, tastes, moments, flavors – the choreography meshed diverse styles without much discretion.

As a choreographer, Handa draws liberally from movement vocabularies of India, China, American modern and post-modern dance. While the spoken stories offered morsels of wisdom and interesting thoughts to ponder, the movement left me confused about intent. If we were to admire the pretty shapes made by Jun Lee, this was accomplished. But if we were to recognize how our gestures and actions can be as idiosyncratic as the accents of our voices, this point was jumbled. In one phrase, Handa seems to incorporate the hand movement of Bharatanatyam – which evokes a specific language of communication – but in this context the mudras appeared like decoration on a phrase.

What did Handa hope to accomplish by weaving together these vocabularies? Were we to know the roots of the dancers’ actions?

If the performance set out to recognize the experiences of TCK, dance can be a powerful representation of cultural identity. Rather than explore how our bodies absorb memories and present knowledge about history and heritage, Handa seems to use dance for visual display. In one of the interviews, a man remembers a specific run he had as a child: his teacher told him to hit his bottom with his heels as he moved. Don’t the dancers’ movements also connect to specific places? What unique perspectives are embedded in their movement?

A beautiful moment occurred when a projection of a house’s interior appeared on the back wall and Jun Lee stood in front of the image: rather than thinking of the house as the constant or stable element, her body caused the image to expand and stretch as the light refracted off her body. The relationship of dancer to picture shifted the conventional definition of home to resident: rather than the home staying still and the resident changing, here, just as in the case of many TCK, the person is constant and homes move frequently. Third culture kids take their hopes, dreams and memories with them wherever they go: change is the constant. Since the dancer did not remain long in this moment, I do not know if Handa intended us to make this connection but it was a gorgeous integration of media and movement.

This production could be an affirming event for people who share experiences like Handa’s and who grapple with issues of identity. In this version, there were moments of clarity that resonated, other sections were more muddled. The props — plastic-like straps which the dancers used to wrap around their bodies as if they were lassoes or binds – could have been more clearly integrated into their stories, and the transitions between media – from video to live performers — were rough and jarring. Perhaps these kinks will be smoothed as the performances continue. According to the program, the cast and sections vary in the July 23 to 25 performances.

Chameleon

created by Alaine Handa
performed by A H Dance Company
reviewed by Kate Mattingly

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Comments

Dear Kate,
Thank you for attending our performance this morning. I wish I had a chance to talk to you after the Q+A but you had left before I had a chance to thank you for coming.
“What did Handa hope to accomplish by weaving together these vocabularies? Were we to know the roots of the dancers’ actions?”
I know I’m not “supposed” to answer reviewers questions but I’m going to do it anyway. I drew on weaving elements of traditional dance forms like Flamenco, Kathak, Bharatyanatyam, Balinese, Javanese, and Tai Chi with more human elements like “walking through a muddy field”, audible breathing, and “walking on egg shells” with clear relationships of meeting new people and trying to connect for a moment yet dissipate when it got too close. There was always a moment of clarity but it is lost once the initial connection was made b/c TCKs tend to have more trouble in close relationships with people and places.
“Don’t the dancers’ movements also connect to specific places? What unique perspectives are embedded in their movement?”
Each solo draws upon the specific experiences of the individual dancers. The first solo danced by Jun Lee fuses Bharatanatyam due to Lee’s involvement with living in London and performing with a contemporary Indian fusion dance company while she lived in Boston. My solo fused Balinese & Javanese & Flamenco with some hints of my Chinese heritage and strong influences of modern and postmodern dance b/c this muddled fusion is my culture. “A confusion of cultures, Uniquely Me.” – Alex Graham James. Ivilisse Esguerra’s solo was infused with a very human relationship with the prop as a metaphor for her culture of being confused and mixed up for having moved to the US at such a young age and then living most of her adult life moving from place to the next. There is a breezy attitude that starts out in the beg. of feeling free to explore her surroundings as a TCK/ CCK (Cross Cultural Kid) which in the TCK research is called the “honeymoon phase” and settles into a more rooted grounding that she finds strapped in chains and dragged around either by her family, schooling, and career yet realizing that it can be a unique experience that she shouldn’t shy away from or deny as part of her.
Many TCKs are in denial of their global upbringing and live the rest of their lives telling those around them that they did not live outside their parents’ culture and shun all things that remind them of growing up global.
I would also recommend visiting TCKid.com since that is a most active TCK site available on the Internet today.
I hope I answered your questions.
– Alaine